[applause] >> thank you so much and good morning, everyone, and welcome, steve. it's really, really a pleasure to have you here in this morning, and we're going to dive right in. i want to begin, first, by giving you credit for speaking to the world affairs could coun. i believe it wasn't only last year, but the year before when steve hadley challenged all of us to come up with a focus, a set of issues, in fact, that the councils across the united states should be honing in on. well, as you know, this year's conference is galvanized around a set of issues, u.s. national security, six topic issues for the president in 2013. and let me just recap those for you, because we want to drill down in these. the councils have selected u.s. economic competitiveness, u.s. education competing globally, the middle east, china, afghanistan/pakistan and u.s. energy policy as the six top issues. so starting with that, looking at it strategically, do you feel that those are the core issues before president obama and this administration and our country going into 2013? um, if not,